Murder defendant fit to stand trial

By TRACY JOHNSON, P-I REPORTER

Published 10:00 pm, Monday, November 13, 2006

A young man accused of gunning down a popular tennis coach on a West Seattle street last year was found mentally fit to stand trial Monday but likely will contend he was insane at the time of the crime.

Samson Berhe, 19, pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder in the death of Mike Robb. Though he was arrested in June 2005, the staff at Western State Hospital has worked for about a year to help him become mentally competent to stand trial.

Defense attorney Byron Ward said Berhe has "a long-standing problem of serious mental illness" and was diagnosed a couple of years ago with schizophrenia.

Ward said he expected to use an insanity defense, suggesting that Berhe's mental problems kept him from understanding the nature of the crime and impaired his ability to tell right from wrong.

The teen reluctantly told Western State staff that he'd been hearing voices, and the staff has seen him vigorously shaking his head in an effort to quiet them, according to a hospital report from earlier this year.

On June 26, 2005, Robb, a coach at Newport High School, was headed to his West Seattle home but for some reason turned around, flipped on his emergency lights and slowed to a stop in the center turn lane.

Berhe is accused of walking up to the car with a shotgun and killing him. Police have said there was no evidence that the two had ever met, though Berhe, who is black, had allegedly talked about wanting to kill a white man or a police officer.